I think they went too far in their conclusions to make the show relevant. Nobody in the past 150 years has made that claim. I all fairness, I do like the show. It does an excellent job of showing how history can remain interesting and how every historical problem can have several interpretations.

just by looking at the battle map you can easily see that the hornets nest would have been a bloody part of the battle, but then again any competent general would have outflanked the federal position instead of moving across open terrain. I really enjoyed their Pickett's charge show but like you i also think they exaggerate the situations a little to make a better show.

I thing the whole Battlefield Detectives is too melo-dramatic......Their conclusions "refute" the evidence of hundreds of eye-witness/first person accounts, reports, casualty counts.....My opinion is that it was a rather hot affair.....

I wold love to see some Historian should devote a tome to the HN, as it was critical in stopping ASJ's advance to the Tennessee where his "horse could get water", allowing Grant with help from Bull Nelson to set up his line.

If we can devote books and time to LRT in Pa, the work of WH Wallace and Prentiss should also be examined in the afternoon of April 6th.

Though the actions of the 20th Maine deserve a thorough review, that of O'Rourke and Strong deserve at least as much praise as the Bates Academic. My belief is that because JLC was a College Professor his fellow academics overlook that he was a pompous blowhard, so well pointed ot by Major Ellis of the 20th.

Where are the "minute by minute" analysis of the Sunken Road and the Mule Shoe, other critical events of key battles?

I'll partially agree with that Klink, i think Chamberlain was given too much credit but thats just my opinion. The soldiers fighting at the mule shoe for nearly 24 hours deserve more attention then what they are given.

A little late to the party here, but Shiloh is of special interest to me so I thought I'd drop in for a minute. On the significance of the Hornet's Nest, it's obviously been the focal point of the battle's history for literally decades, but in recent years its importance has been called into question by some historians. Which I think that Battlefield Detective's program hit upon. I've seen the show and even have that episode on CD here somewhere, but for some reason I'm drawing a blank on most of it, except that it did call the importance of the Hornet's Nest into question.

Here's my own take on it. I think we have to look at the Hornet's Nest within the context of the entire battle, and see how it fits. When you do it that way, I think it starts to become clear that other parts of the battle were at least as important, if not more so, to the final outcome than was the fighting in the Hornet's Nest.

That's not to denigrate the men who fought there, or suggest that what took place in the Hornet's Nest was of no importance. It's simply to point out that there was in fact significant fighting outside that area that had an enormous impact on how things turned out.

Broadly speaking, after the initial attack finally overran Prentiss's camps, Johnston, apparently (and mistakenly) believing that he had turned Grant's left flank, issued orders that effectively caused the Confederate attack to split into two parts. As a result, most of the battle's heavy fighting took place on either side of the Hornet's Nest until late in the afternoon.

Maybe the best way to see this is to have a motion map of the first day's battle. Unfortunately we don't really have such a thing to the best of my knowledge, but we have something online that's reasonably close.

Below is a link to a map from a web site called CivilWarLandscapes.org. It's a series of maps that more or less step you through the battle. I've linked in the map labeled "4:30 a.m. - Confederate Troops Approach." When you scroll all the way to the bottom of that map, you'll see a link for all of the first day maps. From there, you'll be able to step your way through the battle by clicking on each one. Here's the first link...

If you carefully study these maps, you can see how the bulk of the southern army ended up on either side of the Hornet's Nest until late in the day. For most of that time, the attacks on the center (Hornet's Nest area) were a series of isolated, unsupported infantry assaults that had little hope of success.

Not saying the fighting that resulted there wasn't incredibly vicious, because it darn well was. But, the truly heavy assaults were taking place on the flanks. Not until those flanks finally collapsed did the focus shift to the center.

Had either flank fallen apart sooner, the center could not have held, and Grant's army would probably have been overrun. Had the center been breached while those flanks were intact, my semi-educated guess is that the Union troops on either side of the breach could have closed it. There simply was not enough hitting power for the southerners in the center relative to what they faced. The Union position along that stretch was stronger than what the Confederates there could throw at it.

Only after the Union flanks pulled back did Prentiss and Wallace's position finally become the focal point. And in truth, Prentiss probably should have pulled back sooner than he finally tried to do. (Wallace was pulling out when he was fatally shot.) Prentiss would later claim that he and Wallace tried to hold on with the idea of saving the rest of the army. I don't buy that. I think he held on that long because he didn't realize how serious it was until far too late. But by holding out as long as he did, he inadvertently caused the southern army to focus all of their attention on his dwindling position.

Did this buy enough time to save the rest of the army? That's open to question. My own answer is, "perhaps." But even if so, no more than did the fighting on the flanks earlier in the day. Everything that played into causing a delay in the Confederate advance worked in the Union army's favor. They spent the day trading space for time, and it paid off. Barely, and at an incredible cost on both sides. But it worked.

I had the opportunity a few years ago to listen to Stacey Allen discuss the battle and his conclusions on the focal points. One of the things I came away with is his view of the Hornet's nest and it is his very considered opinion that the importance of the hornet's nest as a pivotal pointof the battle is largely myth. One of the things he looks at when studying the battle is the location of burial trenches. Grant, after the battle ordered that the dead be "buried where they lay" and so there are a number of burial places around the battlefield, both Union and Confederate where the dead were buried (temporarily for union soldiers, permanently for Confederate). His view is that the lack of burial trenches in the vacinity of the Hornet's nest indicates that the severity of fighting as reported for decades, did not occur. That is not to say that there was not a fight, but that it did not result in the severe loss of life that the myths would indicate.